Neither Helpful Nor Comforting
by The Amazing Maurice
Summary: Rodney glared. “I was surprised! I wasn’t expecting the ground to open up!”


**Neither Helpful Nor Comforting**

By The Amazing Maurice

Summery: Rodney glared. "I was surprised! I wasn't expecting the ground to open up!"

Characters/Pairings: Shepperd/McKay

Spoilers:I think justreally vague ones for "The Hive", but caveat lector.

Author's Notes: A bit of silliness that unexpectedly grew a plot, for the SGAflashfic SHARK!1!11 challenge.

* * *

Sheppard, dripping and shivering and propped up on shaking arms, knelt on the rock and heaved until his gut hurt and his mouth tasted more like bile than salt. It was black rock, sort of ripply and swirly in places; volcanic. Basalt, maybe. Pretty. He coughed and spat a few more times, then shuddered and leaned his forehead against the slick, cold surface.

Somewhere behind him (not very far behind him; it was a pretty small ledge), Rodney said, "Mwphgh."

John smiled slightly, nose still touching the wet rock, and decided to wait a few seconds until the shaking was manageable. Apparently Rodney took his silence badly, though, because his first actual _words_ were, "Colonel? You didn't, you know, hit a rock and gain horrible internal injuries, did you? Because if you need first aid or emergency surgery then there's not much I'm going to be able to do for you down here—"

"McKay," Sheppard croaked; he could picture Rodney's face right now, half irritation and half genuine, flustered worry. There was an audible clack as Rodney shut his mouth mid-babble. "I'm really fine, I just hit the water at a bad angle." He pushed himself back upright and twisted around as best he could, his thigh brushing Rodney's as he sat back against the cavern wall – and shit, his hands and knees hurt from kneeling on the rock. He would've placed bets that it would be five minutes before his ass was numb, too. They were both soaked through, had both lost their packs with the falling and the almost-drowning. When he stretched his legs out, his boots just kissed the water.

All in all, not in a good position here.

"Hm." The concern had mostly gone from Rodney's face, the irritation winning, which cheered John a little. "Belly-flopped, you mean."

Sheppard felt his mouth twist ruefully. It was true; there had been less than a second of warning (and by 'warning' he meant a small but alarming shift beneath his feet, enough time to grip his sidearm and say, "Uh…") before the ground had crumbled underneath them. Not knowing which way was up, he'd hit the water almost face-first; it had knocked the air right out of him. He'd swallowed an awful lot of salty water before he figured out where the surface was.

Evidently Teyla and Ronon had been far back enough to be saved; their shouts had followed them down. Couldn't hear them now, though.

"At least I had the sense to land feet-first," Rodney continued, starting to sound smug again, though if Sheppard tilted his head casually and squinted, he could see that Rodney's hands were still shaking slightly.

"Yeah. Screaming all the way."

Rodney glared. "I was surprised! I wasn't expecting the ground to open up!"

John smirked, tipped his head back against the wall, and stared out over the rippling black water.

Now that his eyed had adjusted (and he wasn't puking up a gallon of water), he could see just how damn big this place was. A cavern, vast, black, glistening, completely flooded except for some jutting plugs and ledges of rock that rose sharply out of the water and belied exactly how damn deep it was. He couldn't tell how far above them the ceiling was, and he couldn't see the far wall – the light was so dim, he could only guess that it came from the hole they'd made on their way in. It glittered on the crest of each ripple.

"Must be volcanic," he murmured. Rodney grunted irritably beside him, fiddling with something he was holding in his hands. "What are you doing?"

"Obviously I'm trying to work out if my earpiece is salvageable," Rodney said angrily, his face a scowl of frustration. "They're _supposed_ to be waterproof…"

"Apparently they don't take a ducking," Sheppard observed dryly, leaning over his shoulder, which coincidentally gave him pins and needles in unpleasant places. Ah, the butt-numbness, taking even less time than he'd thought.

A small plastic pouch full of tiny screwdrivers, pliers and pokey things was perched on Rodney's left knee. "Resourceful," Sheppard said approvingly.

"They're Zelenka's," Rodney muttered, prodding purposefully at the small tangle of wires. "He uses them to stop his glasses from falling apart. Hey, watch where you're dripping!"

Sheppard backed off obediently, putting up a placating hand and swiping the other through his hair. There were still rivulets running down his face. Rodney, though his hair was plastered to his head like it'd been glued that way, seemingly dried out pretty fast (he wouldn't be fiddling around with electronics otherwise). Unfortunately, their BDUs weren't likely to dry out for quite awhile, so it was a good thing they weren't going anywhere soon and he could just sit back and listen to Rodney chuntering under his breath while they waited for help to arrive. Rodney was apparently reading his mind at this point, because John clearly caught the words "chafing" and "groin rot" amid the mumbling.

"It's not really urgent," he reminded Rodney in an idle voice. "They know we're down here."

Rodney actually paused in his work to glare at Sheppard. "They know we fell through a hole that suddenly opened up in the _ground_ out of _nowhere_; they know we fell who knows how far; if they're calling us they know we aren't_ answering_ them; what kind of conclusions do you think they're going to draw?"

And of course Sheppard replied, in the same mild voice that he knew frustrated Rodney McKay almost beyond reason (a hobby he greatly enjoyed), "None at all. They're going to take into account all kinds of possibilities for what could have happened, probably including this," he waved a hand expansively to include the cavern, into which the echoes of his voice bounced away and didn't come back, "— and they're going to charge right back to Atlantis and get help."

"And what are we going to do for food in the meantime?"

"You've got at least five Powerbars in your pockets; I saw you pack them."

"Fresh water?"

"We've both got water bottles, Rodney."

"And how long is that going to last us?" Rodney yelled, gesturing furiously. "We could be stuck down here for days!"

"We were two hours' walk from the gate!"

Rodney's voice went uncharacteristically soft, then, almost a hiss – a sign that he was really, actually scared. "How do you suppose they're going to get us? We fell through a hole in the ground – the whole area might be unstable—"

"Teyla and Ronon were three feet behind us," Sheppard snapped.

"They still have to consider it unstable," Rodney said doggedly, and Sheppard knew he was right. "It's basic safety procedure. It's not going to be as simple as throwing down a rope – they can't risk the people on the surface breaking through, they can't risk crumbling any significant amount of rock in case it falls on us – on the _off-chance_ we're still alive—"

"…So," Sheppard said eventually, his voice cracking just a little bit, "I guess if we can at least talk to them, they'll know it's worth the bother…"

"Thank you for grasping this at last," Rodney said, still in that awful low voice, and he turned back to the gutted earpiece. Sheppard felt a tightness in his chest when he thought about his own, which had slipped off in the water; the backup, in case Rodney's was completely beyond help, would have been a comfort. He leaned back once more, his legs again stretched out in front of him, and watched the rippling water. They stayed like that for a fair while.

Which was how Sheppard came to wonder about the ripples, which in places swirled and eddied uneasily, and what exactly was causing them.

"Stop that," Rodney muttered.

Sheppard started. "Stop what?" he said.

Rodney's teeth were gritted. He stared very intently at the earpiece, which Sheppard was thankful to note was looking less mangled and more like a functional piece of equipment as Rodney's fingers moved deftly over it. "Stop looking at the water," he said tightly, "like you expect tentacles. It's not conductive in any way. I don't work well when I'm terrified. Whatever it is you're sensing, just… put it off, please?"

"Sensing?" Sheppard said, injecting as much amusement into his voice as he could.

"Yes, with your…" Rodney waved his tiny screwdriver irritably, "dangerdar. I don't know."

"_Dangerdar_?" John said incredulously, and started laughing in earnest while Rodney flushed faintly, which was why he only saw the first flash of fin out of the corner of his eye. It was still enough to make him jerk backwards like he'd been shot and haul his feet as far away from the edge as possible.

Rodney was staring at him wide-eyes. "Stop it!" he said. "What? What?" and then, "Aaah!" because now he'd seen it too, Sheppard wasn't imagining it – there was a fucking _shark fin _gliding through the black water, not three metres from their very tiny narrow rock ledge.

"Aaaah!" Rodney said again, or more accurately shrieked, clutching the earpiece tightly to him; the little toolkit dropped to the rock under his raised, kicking, panic-scrabbling legs. His eyes darted out all over the water, which was how Sheppard saw that apparently the fin wasn't alone, or even the closest. "Aaaaah!" Rodney concluded, very emphatically.

"Rodney, shut up, it's okay!" Sheppard shouted, gripping Rodney's flailing arm before he dropped the earpiece or knocked himself out or something (but definitely not because Sheppard himself was shocked and scared spitless of sharks and wanted something to grip, oh no). "They're in the water and we're not! We're fine! We're perfectly safe!"

"How do you know?" Rodney yelped. "They aren't Earth sharks! They're alien sharks from another planet! They could have _legs_ for all you know!"

"Yeah, and for all _you_ know they could eat plankton!" Sheppard snapped. "Just stay calm, alright? We can't do anything right where we are – as long as we stay right here we should be fine!"

Rodney stared at him with a familiar combination of fury and terror, plastered up against the cavern wall, panting like he'd run a mile; Sheppard stared back, probably looking just as freaked out to Rodney. Abruptly, he realised he still had Rodney's arm in a death grip, and let go as nonchalantly as he could.

After a few long moments, in which the not-sharks circled but didn't come any closer or rear out of the water or actually do anything much at all, Sheppard slid very carefully to the floor, his legs crossed firmly underneath him. After a few more moments, Rodney followed suit with a shaky huff, retrieved the tiny toolkit and resumed his work.

"Legs," he muttered.

"_Plankton_."

"You're _delusional!"_ Rodney hissed, and went back to work. Sheppard leaned back, closed his eyes, and tried not to think about sharks.

An hour and a half later, he was still watching the fins glide gently through the water, and had started having disturbing thoughts like how nice the water must feel, not chilly like the air in the cavern, and how confusing the gigantic splashes they'd made must have been, and really, wouldn't it be good to see those not-sharks up close, see what they really were, come and play?

The thoughts just slipped in, without him meaning to think them at all, as insidious and charming as siren-song. He was even thinking completely irrelevant thoughts, like _what am I? _Obviously his brain had snapped and turned against him. He shifted uncomfortably and started reciting theorems in his head.

Rodney made a small noise next to him. "Any luck?" Sheppard murmured. Rodney was frowning slightly less than before, and laying down the tools.

"Hang on," he said, assembling the earpiece's casing. He carefully hooked it in his ear, and looked at Sheppard with wide eyes. "It's working!"

"It is?" Sheppard scrambled to his knees, bringing himself closer.

"Well, I'm getting static," Rodney said. "Obviously they're back in Atlantis by now, so we can't get contact, but if they come back— Of course, that's assuming all the rock doesn't cause massive interference," Rodney interrupted himself, looking flustered. "That's a very real possibility."

"We need to get out of here," Sheppard muttered.

"Thank you, Lieutenant-Colonel-states-the-obvious."

John couldn't help but grin, because really, what else was there to do? He was sitting on a very small rock at the edge of an underground sea full of not-sharks, low on food and fresh water, wet through and starting to shiver, with the very real possibility that he would never see daylight again – and it occurred to him that the best possible person to have with him in a time like this was Rodney McKay, who was not only the person most likely to find all possible ways out of an impossible situation, but entertaining too. And he kept Sheppard thinking straight, which kept him useful.

There were ledges like theirs all around the curving wall of the cavern, some almost touching, some metres apart. Some were higher and some were lower, but it still might be possible to climb from one to the other, provided you spent as little time in the water as possible.

"Hey," he said, nudging Rodney in the shoulder, and proceeded to pitch his theory.

Rodney looked at him in wide-eyed horror. "And what would be the point of this? And by the way, _no._"

"There are probably other chambers," Sheppard insisted. "We might be able to find a way back to the surface."

Rodney was still looking at him like he was stupid or crazy, possibly both. "What do you think this is, the Mines of Moria?" he said incredulously. "Are you expecting to find a neatly-carved stairway to the surface?"

"If it's volcanic, and I think it is," John explained patiently, "there should be volcanic vents, which _will_ lead to the surface. Even if they don't, if we get up high enough there might not be as much interference with the earpiece."

"Provided we can keep it dry," Rodney muttered, but he was looking more thoughtful. "There is one truly gigantic flaw in your plan."

"Yes?"

"Climbing on slippery rocks surrounded by sharks practically in the _dark_ is for insane people who are incredibly fit and sure-footed. Not me, in other words."

Sheppard sighed. "Well, it might motivate you to know that if we stay here much longer, the sharks will be a problem whether we're in the water or not. Have you noticed how all the rocks are wet? Even the ones that are about a metre out of the water?"

"Oh, no." Rodney's face went white. "Oh, you're _not_ telling me—"

"I think there's a tide," John finished unnecessarily, trying not to wince at the look on Rodney's face.

"How long?" There was a definite squeak in his voice.

"Um…" John backed up against the cavern wall and stretched his legs out again. This time, his heels sank deep under the water's surface. He pulled them out again and squinted to see the waterline. "I think it's risen about… five inches in the last hour and a half?"

"Well, that's not too bad," Rodney said, though he didn't look particularly comforted. "That's an inch approximately every eighteen minutes, a foot every three hours and thirty-six minutes…"

"It's probably more," Sheppard said helpfully. Really, now that he looked at it, it looked more like four inches, maybe four-and-a-half, and it had been slightly more that an hour and a half, probably an hour and forty-five, so…

…Except some of those rocks were barely above the surface now, and as if they needed further reminding, one really big fin glided towards their rock like a homing missile, turned at the last minute and rolled on its side before diving down, revealing a wide shark-grin full of incredibly pointy teeth.

"We've got to get out right now," Rodney said in a strained voice.

"Yep," John said, nodding.

It was slow going over the rocks, which were every bit as treacherous as Rodney had predicted. By the time Sheppard heaved himself onto a high basalt shelf two hundred metres from their original position, he was sore, breathless and wet through all over again. It felt like there wasn't an inch of him that hadn't been slammed into the rock at least once; gritting his teeth against his screaming shins and palms was occupying most of his attention.

And it had taken twenty damn minutes to get here.

There was a small splash, a panicked yelp, and by the time Sheppard managed to turn himself around Rodney was facedown on the rock, spreadeagled, clinging to it like a limpet with his left leg soaked to the knee. "Have you noticed," he said in a muffled but surprisingly even voice, "that we've almost _died_ several times in the last half hour and have gotten practically nowhere?"

"Yes," Sheppard said resignedly. "Yes, I have."

Rodney lifted his face from the rock, his expression vaguely homicidal. "This was an incredibly stupid plan."

"It was the only plan we had that didn't involve waiting around for the sharks to get us," Sheppard pointed out.

"Which is good for making you feel like you did everything you could, but it still means that we won't have the energy to fight them off when we're finally surrounded."

A thought belatedly occurred to Sheppard. "Or," he said brightly, "we could just climb on top of the highest rock we can find and wait for the rescue team!"

Rodney actually levered himself up off the rock and crawled closer to level John his best dealing-with-a-retard expression. As Rodney's expressions went, it was pretty hilarious, and went on for several, searching moments. "…How?" he said at last. "How can you be so optimistic when you're so obviously an idiot?"

"It's a gift," Sheppard replied, a little stung. As last-ditch plans went, it wasn't totally stupid.

Rodney closed his eyes and thunked his head dramatically against the rock. Or at least he tried to; Sheppard's thigh was in the way, so really it just meant his heavy, very solid head lolling against John's hip. It was bizarrely comforting; after a few minutes, his fingers found their way into Rodney's damp, feathery hair, and they stayed like that for a long while, breathing out exhaustion.

"I've been meaning to ask, by the way," Rodney said, his words soft puffs of warm air over the general vicinity of John's groin. "Why do you know so much about volcanoes?"

"I remember eighth grade?" Sheppard said, unwilling to abandon his contentment. "I don't know, I just thought volcanoes were cool."

Rodney grunted in a vaguely disparaging way, and eased himself upright; John felt weirdly disappointed, but Rodney was still pressed right up against his side – shoulder to hip to thigh – so it wasn't too big a loss.

Three feet away from their outstretched legs, several dozen not-sharks circled happily.

"The worst thing," Rodney began, and trailed off, frowning at the silvery fins. Sheppard nudged his shoulder, making Rodney glare at him, but he continued, "The worst thing is that I keep thinking about how inviting the water looks." He shuddered expansively, and waved a hand at the water. "It's almost like I want to _get to know them._ After all this time, my mind has finally snapped. I knew that with an intellect as high as mine it was always a danger, but this is just humiliating."

"Yeah, well, you're not the only one," Sheppard said. "If your brain's going, so's mine, 'cause I've been thinking the same things."

"Huh," was all Rodney said. He looked very thoughtful.

"Maybe they're psychic sharks," Sheppard speculated, yawning. "They're using Jedi mind tricks to lure us into the water."

"Neither helpful nor comforting," Rodney said, rising stiffly. "Ow. Are we finding this mythical high rock to curl up and die on, or are we opting to wait here?"

"Nono," said Sheppard indistinctly, getting to his feet. "Blind optimism will triumph. That earpiece still intact?"

Rodney managed to simultaneously glare at him, pull the earpiece out of his top pocket and carefully unwrap the plastic tool pouch and Powerbar wrapper he'd swaddled it in, while gritting out, "No, in my desperate attempts to not let the possibly man-eating sharks near me I let our _only chance of survival_ slip into the water after I spent nearly two hours rewiring it and drying it out." Sheppard grinned to see him carefully checking it over anyway, but then Rodney looked back up at him, disturbingly intense and upset, and the grin slid off his face.

"You actually think we're going to live, don't you?" Rodney said, quietly.

Sheppard stared at him. There wasn't actually a lot he could say to that that didn't involve yelling or stunned silence, so he just said, "… Yeah. Kind of have to."

Surprisingly, Rodney just said, "Okay," wrapped the earpiece back up and put it away. "Lead the way, then."

So John did lead the way, climbing slowly and carefully over the slippery basalt, barely able to see five feet in front of him, trying not to make it obvious that he was taking his time to let Rodney catch up with him, though of course Rodney knew, and kept shooting Sheppard bothered and disgruntled looks every time he caught up. Some of the ledges were higher than others and required a lot of painful scrambling, and at one point they had to pick their way over a long scattering of almost- and semi-submerged rocks the size of paving stones, like the world's most stupid and dangerous game of hopscotch.

All the while, the flashing silver fins followed them, circling back, darting forward, but always moving with them. A dark, hidden, deeply cynical part of Sheppard's mind told him that that probably blew any hopes they had that the not-sharks, whatever they were, would leave them alone if they fell in the water. Yeah. He was really hoping that Ronon and Teyla got here soon.

And then, halfway across a particularly narrow, slippery and awkward ledge, with Rodney still picking his way carefully over the much wider, more solid ledge ten feet behind him, the rock suddenly crumbled under Sheppard's left foot. He overbalanced, slipped, scrabbled, and between one sharp aborted noise of horror and Rodney's yell of "Colonel!" he was in the water.

He choked on a mouthful of saltwater (_fantastic_, he thought hysterically_, just when I thought I'd gotten the taste out of my mouth_) and tried to find a handhold in the rock, but it was high and sheer and really, really slippery. There was rock under his feet; he was submerged to his chest, but it didn't help him to find a grip. He could hear the faint swish of fins cutting through the water behind him, and when something brushed against his ankle it was _almost_ enough to propel him right out of the water.

Rodney's white, terrified face appeared too high above him. "Here!" he yelled, sticking his hand down, which would have been really heroic if not for the squeak in his voice. Sheppard grabbed it, and to his desperate relief, Rodney managed to haul him halfway out – apparently Rodney was a lot stronger than he pretended to be – but John's hands were wet and Rodney's were slippery with sweat, and Sheppard was heavier than he looked and Rodney was overextending himself, so there was one long, awful moment where they caught each other's horrified gaze and the world slid to a really bad angle, and then they were _both_ in the water.

Rodney shrieked, clinging tightly to Sheppard's forearms while flailing in every other sense. The not-sharks – and what was the goddamned _difference _right now, why bother with the fucking _distinction? _a McKay-sounding part of his mind screamed – surrounded them completely, circling and passing back and forth, inches away. He could see the dark shapes of their bodies beneath the surface; some were barely five feet long, but some were _massive_, some looked four or five metres long, easily big enough to be man-eaters. Then one of the larger sharks passed between them and the rock, pushing hard into them, and Rodney's grip on his arms was so tight he was probably in danger of broken bones. Worst of all, John's single recurring thought at this precise moment was _hey, this water's a lot warmer than the air_.

"No!" Rodney said. "_No_! Absolutely _not_!"

"McKay?" Sheppard gripped his shoulder hard, but Rodney didn't look at him; he was staring wildly at the circling sharks. His expression had gone from absolute terror to complete fury. Then his gaze snapped back to Sheppard's.

"I'm not doing this," he said frankly. "I refuse! I've nearly died lots of times during this expedition, Colonel, by many very scary things, like Wraith and, and Wraith-_worshippers_ and Genii and explosions and nanogenes and _allergies_, for God's sake!" He was shouting now, wild-eyed. "I _refuse_ to be _eaten_ by something whose basic design hasn't changed for a hundred million years!"

John had always really wanted to be stoic and flip at his time of doom, but apparently that wasn't going to happen because being stoic and flip didn't make an impression on sharks _or _Rodney McKay. Instead the best he could do was wait for his probably messy and horrific death with patience. "I don't think we have much of a choice, Rodney," he said.

Rodney stared back at him, his face shocked, then miserable, and they stayed like that, arm gripping arm under the black water, staring at each other and at the churning water, waiting for the end.

And waiting.

And waiting.

After several long minutes passed with no-one being eaten, Rodney said, "Uh..."

"Shh!" hissed John, staring wildly at the circling sharks. A stupid, impossible thought was forming. One six-footer swam close enough to butt its head against his hip, but it moved away again. Another huge not-shark executed a barrel-roll, flashing its rows of daggerlike teeth in an obscene sharkish grin.

"Rodney," he said, very, very calmly, "a little while ago, did you think about how nice and warm this water is compared to the air in this cavern?"

Rodney, of course, looked at him like he was a dangerous lunatic, which was frankly what he felt like, but got a very thoughtful expression that made Sheppard turn his head in the general vicinity of the not-shark swarm and call, "Hey! You guys going to eat us?" And another shark swam up to them and butted its head against Rodney, this time, who flinched, but the answer had already popped into John's head, fully-formed.

"Why would they want to eat us—" he said slowly, and Rodney completed in a distracted voice,

"… when they don't even know what we are? Oh my God," he said, with a sort of horrified wonder, "they _are_ psychic sharks with Jedi mind tricks!"

_Hey_, said the psychic not-sharks, _you going to come swimming or what?_

Which was, of course, when the puddle-jumper came through the ceiling.

"Ow!" said Rodney, clutching his forearm protectively. "You're just giving me more bruises, which by the way I though would have been impossible after today, even for you."

"All part of the service," Carson said in a cheerful voice, and wandered off back to his lab. Apparently the not-sharks had consented to give him a DNA sample for him to compare with Earth sharks, which was the kind of thing that made him impervious even to Rodney. Sheppard was pretty sure he'd heard him humming, before.

He leaned over Rodney's bed and drawled, "No, Rodney, how do you _really_ feel?"

"I'm not talking to you," Rodney snapped. "You're clearly a dangerous anomaly. The SGC is full of them."

"Anomaly?" This ought to be good.

"You defy all reason and probability!" Rodney said, waving his arms in a way that he obviously instantly regretted. "Ow. You always come out of completely awful situations mostly unscathed and victorious. We fell into a den of sharks today, and it turned out that not only didn't they want to eat you, they were _intelligent_ and had their own little shark society, and! _And_ were _grateful _when Elizabeth warned them about the Wraith! One of the few friendly, laid-back societies we've come across in this galaxy, and they're sharks! How do you do it?" He slumped back against the bed, panting, still glaring dolefully at Sheppard.

"And," he added, in more of a mumble, "you remembered eighth grade and volcanoes, which is just nerdy. And you noticed the tide, and I… didn't, immediately. And you had those ideas about finding a vent and getting to higher ground, even though it was stupid and ultimately useless," he finished, staring at his knees.

John realised with a kind of detached wonder that he'd spent way too much time around McKay when he could tell that he'd just been complimented. Extravagantly. Rodney looked like it had actually physically hurt him to say those things, which was why (possibly, yes, coupled with the morphine Carson had given him) he said, "Huh," shut the curtain, leaned forward, and kissed Rodney. Just a very light, brief, soft press of lips,soft because he couldn't get over how nice it had felt to have Rodney's head in his lap back on that rock, brief because he didn't want to scare him off, andlight because at some point they had both managed to hit even their faces on the rock. Seriously, they had bruises _everywhere_.

"Huh," echoed Rodney, looking slightly glassy-eyed. Then, "Oh, hey! Do you think we can pick this up when I've had an obscenely long shower and a lot more painkillers?"

John had to grin at the cheerful, satisfied look on his face, and nodded yes. He'd taken this long to dip his toes in – he could stand to wait a little longer.

END


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